Sadiq Khan urged to end London’s e-bike ‘patchwork’
Sadiq Khan has been urged to speed up plans for a London-wide e-bike licence, as Forest warned spiralling council fees and a regulatory “patchwork” risk forcing operators from the capital.
In a letter to the mayor seen by Morning Wire, the London-based e-bike operator said delays to Transport for London’s new licensing regime were threatening the “sustainability and competitiveness” of the market.
Forest pointed to the collapse of car-sharing service Zipcar in London as a warning of what could happen when the economics of operating across the capital no longer stack up.
“The market is already under increasing pressure due to inconsistent approaches across boroughs to regulation, operations and parking, as well as unsustainable revenue-sharing and spiralling enforcement costs,” co-founders Agustin Guilisasti and Caroline Seton wrote.
“We have already seen how valued mobility services can be lost when commercial conditions become unsustainable, such as the exit of Zipcar from London.”
The letter has also been signed by the London Cycling Campaign, Bikeability Trust, Labour Walks and Cycles, Pedal Me, Soho Business Alliance and London Clean Air Initiative.
It follows growing friction between London’s town halls and the companies behind the thousands of rental bikes now lining the capital’s streets.
Morning Wire revealed earlier this year that some boroughs had sharply increased the cost of operating schemes, with Forest claiming charges had risen by as much as 15,100 per cent since 2022.
Figures showed one borough increased annual operator fees by more than five-fold without adding any additional parking bays.
Another operator faced more than £80,000 in permit and compliance costs before deploying a single bike in Canada, alongside enforcement fines running at around £10,000 a month for each issue area.
Operators can also face demands to hand councils a share of ride revenue, fund discounted fares and pay charges to recover impounded bikes.
London Councils has also pushed back against claims boroughs are treating e-bikes as a cash cow, arguing fees are needed to pay for parking infrastructure and council officers.
A spokesperson for the mayor of London said: “The mayor welcomes the government’s plans to give cities powers to better manage dockless e-bike schemes – something he’s been calling for since 2017 when the first schemes arrived in London.”
“TfL and the Mayor are working closely with the Department for Transport on the secondary legislation required to implement these much-needed controls as quickly as possible.”
The government has now handed TfL powers to establish a single licensing framework, eventually replacing the individual agreements negotiated between operators and London’s boroughs.
Forest welcomed the legislation but called on Khan to direct TfL to publish a clear timetable for bringing the system into force.
“No other mode of transport used by hundreds of thousands of Londoners is regulated on a borough by borough basis,” the letter said. “There is no reason that shared e-bikes should be the exception.”
The intervention comes as pressure also grows on operators over the behaviour of riders and bikes left blocking pavements.
Forest this week began fitting number plates to around 500 bikes in Richmond to make individual vehicles easier to identify following collisions or parking incidents. Persistent offenders can ultimately be banned from using its service.
Kensington and Chelsea has meanwhile impounded thousands of rental bikes as councils respond to complaints about vehicles obstructing pavements, particularly for wheelchair users and visually impaired pedestrians.
The increasingly fraught relationship has also complicated expansion plans. Morning Wire revealed in July that Ealing had held back from signing a fresh agreement with Voi during commercially sensitive negotiations over its next operating period.
Forest itself was ordered to remove its bikes from the borough earlier this year after operating without an active agreement.
The micromobility giant now operates across 20 London boroughs and records more than 2m rides a month, according to the company.